Stargate: Altera
by stephenopolos
Summary: Follow the journey of the Alteran people as they cross the distance between their former home and their future. Please note the first chapter of this story is in the process of a rewrite. Also may it be forever henceforth noted that the franchises upon which this story is based, belong entirely to their respective owners. Sci/Fanta/Adv/friend. Updates irregularly.
1. Discovering the universe

**_Disclaimer:_** The following is a loosely based narrative on the origin of the ancients from star gate. They are altogether too powerful in that series though their powerful technology is rather pointless with how little military sense they display, though that would be a personal opinion. Any content directly related to the original shows belongs to the copyright holder the rest of it is purely fantasy and subject to the laws relating to derivative works.

* * *

As much as our calculations led us to believe we were not alone, the fact that we existed proved for us that life had to exist out there.

We launched countless many probes, voyagers of that eternal night sky. Our first probes were primitive, yet we were hopeful. A few of our earliest probes still function, a testament to their engineering. They send telemetry slowly and with outdated and simple equipment. Each one was programmed for a specific star our closest galactic neighbors first. As we grew in knowledge and understanding of the universe our probes became more complex, better equipped. We developed faster engines, better methods of communicating with our probes.

Out of the trillion stars in our galaxy with even more planets orbiting each star, only a few billion of those planets ended up in the habitable zone. Even out of the billions of those planets with the correct parameters for life only a hundred million were actually habitable. Every habitable world we set our sights on, surveyed as perfect. Yet we found no companions among the stars. Of those worlds we had visited desert and ocean worlds, worlds filled with vast plains and empty beautiful skies, we were utterly alone.

After our first wave of probes into the galaxy reported suitable conditions. We spread like a wild fire throughout the stars, starting slowly at first, like a campfire kindled on a cool summer evening. Generation ships to carry our people from a crowded planet to new homes. Each decade our skills and understanding increased. We built a vast network of what you call star gates, wormholes, artificially created tunnels through space between two points.

However, as much as I would like to say we were a united people. We were not, our people where split between science and faith. We could find no balance, no point of moderation, or path of discourse between us. World by world the light of our knowledge was extinguished. Before you abandon your faith because of my account, please understand we know not the origin of your faith nor the particulars, for faith of itself is not a bad thing. We know this now, that a denial and rejection of all things not explicitly allowed by our current understanding of science is foolish, we are capable of being incorrect in our understanding of science. With our last resources we built a great ship and our faith would not allow us to harm our former brothers and sisters. The battle waged to the gates of our last city in a mountain on a world thousands of light years from our former home world. As our last effort to make peace with those who had proclaimed us heretics and declared holy war failed, we fled the galaxy using an untested drive we disappeared from our last stronghold on a pillar of fire and smoke into the skies we jumped. Our last mountain crumbled beneath us.

* * *

The alarms sounded overhead, warning lights flashing through the metal hallways. "All personal to designated emergency stations, this is not a drill. Lift off will begin in 20 minutes. I repeat this is not a drill." I looked around the room one last time, we had talked about this eventuality though none of our people ever thought it would go this far.

I remember hearing the scared tone in the voice of the council leaders on planet Jana is they broadcast a message to their population. "Origin is a religion of peace" they said. "We want to respect that peace and welcome our brothers and sisters."

One month later half the population of the planet had been killed for not converting. Protestors in the streets held signs declaring "Slay those who insult Origin!" And "Behead the unrepentant infidels!"

This scene was repeated throughout the entire galaxy for the next five years, planet after planet fell to Origin as they slaughtered and bombed all resistance to the Stone Age.

Five agonizing years I spent in my research looking for a way to stop the insanity. Ultimately the high council vetoed my efforts with the arcam veritas or ark of truth.

"Amelius, we believe in understanding the world not through interference or violence but through observation and debate, and most of all freedom of will. I cannot in good conscious condone the use of this device." The councilor said shaking her head. "It would be to corrupt all that we are as a people denying the free will of the individual to believe as they choose. At this point we are outnumbered by the followers of origin a hundred to one and the imbalance is widening every day."

I tried to point out that the followers of origin had been using similar devices against their people and this would only undo the damage they had done. But it was no use.

"Amelius let it go. The council has decided we must review our alternatives." The council left my lab in silence, as my assistant and I packed the few things we could, preparing to leave Celestis.

"Wait," I said turning back to the lab. "I almost forgot." Looking down at my notebook I picked it up the designs for the gateway on top. It looked as if I'd have plenty of time to perfect the technology.

* * *

I hated that we were running like scared dogs tails tucked between our legs. We had our collective posteriors handed to us. Now we fled the scene of our defeat to lick our wounds.

**1 year 5 months and 3 days** in the void between galaxies

"It is a wormhole and yet it is not."Amelius stated. He was helping Janos Tav study. "Remember what the wormhole theory actually states?"

"A natural or artificial space time construct between two points in normal space. Such wormholes do shorten the distance between two points by providing a temporary bridge so to speak of normal space time between them. However they remain in normal space for the entirety of the journey." Tav repeated as if reading from a textbook behind his eyelids.

"Exactly, and the problem with artificially creating wormholes in this manner is?" Amelius paused, waiting for the student.

"It would have to effectively create or repurpose a portion of normal space for the purpose of the bridge, the power requirements alone would be…"Tav broke off scrunching his eyebrows together, "extremely high doesn't cut it" he concluded.

"Which is why we don't quite use normal space," Amelius pointed to the next page a complicated equation written out describing something.

Tav spent a few seconds looking at the description in front of him. "This is… This describes..."

Amelius took this pause to look at the clock they were nearing the end of the working period"Enough, we'll continue this tomorrow. Go spend some time with your peers in the recreation facilities."

Tav nodded to his mentor gathering his work and neatly filing it away. A third of the day for sleep, a third for work, and a third for personal use, this was the pattern they had used since the beginning. Tav pondered that for a moment as he cleaned up.

"Seven may be the number of completion, however, 8 is the next step." Tav heard Amelius mutter to himself as he walked out the door.

* * *

*A day is 24 hours, 1 week is 8 days, 1 month is 3 weeks or 24 days, 1 year is 16 months for a total of 48 weeks or 384 days. This is because I said so. Also because base 8. You may also note that: 3 * 8 = 24.

**I'm going to try transitioning from semi-omniscient first person to third person narrative. It's difficult to convey everything properly from one point of view

*** Look, unless the alteran/latin root word describes the idea better, I'm going to be ignoring any alteran words for things that have direct correlation to earth things.


	2. It is a big universe out there

**Part 2a:** _"It's a big universe out there."_

Stargate dynamics courtesy of Aer-ki Jyr and Home World Security I highly recommend their Return of the Ancients series. Aer's work is quite a rush.

* * *

Amelius looked over his notes another time. He shook his head at his ancestor's ingenuity with the original Astria Porta. To think what they accomplished without understanding the science behind it. The original portal was barely ten feet in diameter. The astria porta partially explained how they had spread so quickly. But there was still something nagging at the back of his mind. This all happened too quickly.

He scribbled a few more notes on the page; they needed a more secure system. They also needed faster ships or this journey was going to take some time. He'd bring it up at the next science council. He had a few ideas about the first part. He hoped that someone else had a few about the second. In another year Tav would be ready to move to his next instructor, perhaps he might even be ready to take the test and get his own assignment. Even with FTL it was going to take them another two years to reach the next galaxy they'd stop but only just long enough to gather essentials, and take a survey, after that they'd be on their way again.

* * *

Tav looked down at the 3d chess game in front of him. Then he looked up at Artiem Lal his opponent, she had him cornered. If this had been regular chess Tav might have won but he still wasn't used to paying attention to the extra vectors of assault. Lucky for him, his aptitude was for science. Lal was going into tactical, the game really wasn't fair but if Tav wanted to improve he had to play with better players, such as Lal.

He examined the board again, and then looked at the clock. He needed to be in the gym for physical training in ten minutes and he wanted to arrive early. He looked at the board again.

"Your win in 5 moves," he said tipping the king over.

"You give up to easy," Lal said smiling as she picked up one of his columnar proceeding to knock down her own queen placing her king in check. They began packing up the game. She looked up into his dark eyes, "Same time tomorrow?"

"Same time" He nodded leaving.

Half jogging to the track, he passed five of his maturia on their way to other assignments. His active period was the during the sleep cycle most of the ship was asleep. That would change as more of the maturia onboard became adults requiring less sleep.

He went down three decks and past a few more bulkheads arriving in the gym. Tav activated the gym computer with a mental command "Log track time, alert when 20 minutes is up" he told the computer barely pausing as he went through the door to the track. They'd only just started integrating neural commands into the computers on ship. Why the gym was one of the first he didn't know. But it did make it easier.

* * *

Amerlius looked over the telemetry from their first hyperspace probe. It had arrived in one piece in the next galaxy. The method of travel was still unstable and unpredictable. They probably wouldn't do a manned test until they had reestablished on a new home. The first system scan was fascinating though. The single planet showed an almost barren world with a pyramid at the equator. This was the first sign of intelligence they'd found it was causing quite a stir. He'd put in a request for that to be the first system visit when they arrived.

He pushed the information aside filing it away in the system with a tag for the computer to remind him before they arrived. He picked his notes back up. Matter couldn't stay in Nifleheym but energy could he absently tapped his fingers on the console. Perhaps… yes, he thought changing the frequency of the energy field he could separate the astria porta. It would be a while before he could put the theory to practice but yes. He already knew the easiest frequency to attain which the astria porta currently used. He'd have to build the security protocol into the gate itself to prevent it from being tampered with. That brought up other possibilities as well. If he was going to be redesigning the porta he might as well include the other features, Sensors to provide information to the point of origin about the destination and increase the dimensions. He'd put holo imagers on the high security ones to give advance information about what was on the other side.

* * *

**2 years in the void**

"The science council has reviewed your proposal Amelius. You have tentative approval to work on it until the high council makes a final decision we're confident they will also approve. If we can improve the security and functionality of the astria porta then we should." Amelius stood at the console reading the response. This was good. A much better response than the last one, when he'd proposed the ark of truth 7 years ago. Tactical must have been enthusiastic about this. He sat down a bit stunned, thinking. I'll have to put together a research group. I hope Tav is available. Tav had a good mind. Yes.

He pulled up a list of researchers currently available ticking off names as he sent them a small message explaining the project. He wanted a few from tactical, command, engineering, and biology each, he needed input on what kind of sensors and how many different security levels. This might take a while.

* * *

**3 years in the void**

They were nearing the edge of the new galaxy they'd sent a few hyperspace probes carrying small astria porta to a few planets they'd identified for resource gathering. In another few days they'd be in range to begin sending out groups to gather valuable resources required for the next leg of the journey. Amelius brought the matter of the pyramid before the anthropology and science council a few weeks previous when the computer reminded him. They debated for a time then told him they would assemble a team and send him along when they were within range.

* * *

**8 years ago – Planet Rineah, Destra Galaxy**

"Quickly we must leave! The gate is clear but I don't know for how long," the lanky dark haired teen Arwen led them quickly through the rubble. It had taken 3 months to search the area and gather this small group of five.

"Hold my hand" Tav grabbed Theyla's hand pulling her over a larger piece of rubble. His dark brown eyebrows scrunched in concentration.

This city had been beautiful once. Now the once beautiful towers and arches lay half crushed in the streets, bombs from both defenders and attackers had taken their toll. The other three juveniles with the group were the last from the city and the surrounding area. They would be killed if the attackers captured them, even if only for just attempting to leave. But more so then that they were children of the altera in the eyes of the attackers and that meant a death sentence.

They made it to the smallish silver-yellow stargate; Arwen quickly tapped the keys at the base of the gate just outside of the range of the vortex He hoped they hadn't left celesta yet. Just as he finished a patrol of attackers came up the main street carrying grey metal staffs, seeing the active gate they dropped into firing position and aimed their metal staffs and began firing.

Arwen was hit in the back just as he hit the final key activating the gate. The event horizon formed pushing out the familiar vortex missing the tip of his nose by a hair. A second blow caught his leg and he slumped onto the steps. He wouldn't be able to make it through the gate. His body burning inside he felt a calm move through his mind, as he grunted and slowly stood, extended his hand palm outward facing the attackers, his back to the gate.

"Go" Arwen hissed between gritted teeth, the juveniles looked at him as blue bolt after bolt of plasma energy sped towards them, then suddenly veered off left or right harmlessly flying into the distance. After this display his body would be worn-out, His body's reserves depleted, his core energy would be exhausted, he was quickly burning through his inner core with each staff blast.

Tav didn't hesitate; grabbing Theyla and the others he pushed them through the gate. Jumping into the blue puddle himself just in time to see Arwen fall before the gate swallowed him. They were lucky to have an astria porta, then again, perhaps not. The experimental gates had only been placed on a small number of planets. Small compared to the number of inhabited planets to choose from.

* * *

**Planet Celesta, Destra Galaxy**

The five children fell through the gate into the middle of a slightly surprised group of Altera; their descent ending in a tangled heap just past the steps leading to the terminating point of their destination gate. Several altera rushed forward with medical equipment to scan and dress any wounds as well as untangle the group.

"Where is Arwen?" the man guarding the gate looked at Tav standing before him.

"He sacrificed himself, burning himself out to maintain a shield while we escaped."

"Damn."

"I didn't know we could do that sir." Tav looked confused.

"We can't," the man looked Tav in the eye, "at least not yet, Arwen's extreme need supplied nearly unlimited power but at great cost. Very few Altera have ever done what he did, and all those who did manage died or were so near death they died shortly after."

* * *

**Alteran cityship – Celesta**

"My name is Tria. We will assign each of you a maturia. We will try to keep each maturia similar in age, each of you will spend an hour or more each day with one of your maturia's mentors after a year you will move up in class and exchange your mentors for new ones." There was a pause as she looked at the group of scattered refugees. "Each maturia will have twenty mentors for the hundred in that maturia. At the end of the year you will be given an aptitude test to place you in the subject you will be most at home with."

"It's a big universe out there and my duty is to prepare all of you to further our understanding of it."

* * *

**Present**

Tav looked at the new gate that had been constructed out of cannibalized damaged ships in the cityship hold. The ship would be in close enough range of the new galaxy to dial in another few minutes. He looked up at the star map on his console and whispering to himself. "It's definitely a big universe out there."

* * *

Sorry about speeding this last chapter along. there wasn't much that happens in the first void and I probably could have used the time to develop some of the characters and I may rewrite eventually to do just that. But i'm really eager to push them into this first new galaxy.

* * *

Thanks for the review Beyogi! In response, the tragedy of the story has already happened the Altera have been kicked out of Destra by their own kin. This isn't technically tragedy in the classical sense though _****spoiler****_ as that would imply they could have actually done something about it. _**** end spoiler****_ That will shape the characters of the story but it's not the main focus. What happens now is their journey and what they themselves do. It may be AU it may not. The difference is this, absolutely nothing. I've got pretty much free reign with what happens to our friendly Altera, so much free reign i'm almost surprised I couldn't find any other ancient alteran history. Partly due to the fact that the show is rather intentionally vague providing limited detail and only a few fixed points such as their being kicked out of destra or the ori galaxy. It provides almost no detail about their level of technology or biology as far as the standard range of altera powers like healing and such. So I get to sit back and cackle with delight. I can give them 1 ship or 20 ships, the cannon only makes known the one that left planet celesta but I doubt the alteran would throw all their eggs in that one basket.

I don't want to make this easy on them though so I promise a good struggle, hostiles, and such other things. so no this is not an "Oh how the mighty have fallen!" story.

*shhh... I know they're a race from a very long ways away, how could they have chess? My excuse: imported to earth by merlin. You'd be surprised how many of our "games" and ideas come from the Altera. It may be a plot crutch but would you prefer me saying, "_Chess like game_" or a bear like animal that looks like a bear but is called something else even though it behaves exactly like a bear? That's also a plot crutch and a bad trick used to fill up the page.


	3. More Flashbacks Part A

I'm sorry this story was rushed. I should have thought it out more. Now I have a lone cityship vastly greater in carrying capacity to its younger future daughter Atlantis yet all the same weaker due to the relative youth of the race that built it. I've poorly explained the original conflict between two halves of the same society. I've spent the last week reading other authors' works in the hopes that through the process of osmosis I might glean something worthwhile.

Unfortunately, as it currently stands, though lacking in the usual enemies I risk the danger of turning this into stargate voyager all over again; I'm going to try to counter that in the following chapters.

* * *

**Chapter 3 Flashbacks part A**

"Ike! Get up! You're going to be late Man!" Tav shook him again, and Aikino groaned. "See if I ever try to get you up again!"

Pushing his friend and roommate away he forced himself to sit up, he looked at the clock in the wall and realized he only had fifteen minutes, he rushed into the bathroom confirmed the clothes he had set out the night before were still on the shelf pulled his pajamas off and jumped into the shower.

Turning on the water he let out a howl as a freezing cold stream rushed out of the shower head above him, "Seriously!" He yelled muttering to himself "why did I agree to bunk with this trickster", resetting the temperature control with one hand on the waterproof display; Tav could be heard laughing from the other room. The control changed to display that the temperature would be just a few degrees above body temperature, 'much better' he thought as he grabbed the soap and shampoo.

Rushing he managed to finish in just under three minutes, dressed in another three had his black hair dry, teeth brushed and rushed through the corridors, just in time to get to his yoga mat on the floor in advanced meditation, just ahead of his assigned mentor. He noticed Tav was already there barely restraining a grin.

"He that arises late must forever run to catch up" intoned the cryptic instructor from the doorway as she inspected his still wet hair.

Entering the room she greeted the rest of the group with her usual cryptic address. "How long is the tunnel if you cannot see the end." He suspected this had something to do with the near death experiences in the historical database relating to the light at the end of the tunnel that so many claimed to have seen before being revived.

She never told any of her novices her name; they all referred to her as maître. Without fail every eighth day she assembled their group to go over the meditations designed to allow them control over their internal systems. Such control would allow them to restrict blood flow to a vital artery in the event of losing a limb, or accelerate healing from minor injury. The younger the training started the better chance of success it had in those goals. Theoretically such control might even allow them to live longer, though there was no way of knowing for sure.

Meditation involved little actual meditation as the first half of the time was spent being shown breathing patterns and subtle rhythms that would help them ease into a meditative state. The maitre always signified the end of her initial group instruction with the cryptic continuation of her opening line, "You cannot tell the length of the tunnel until you see the exit." She admonished each of them the importance of continuing to practice the lesson once a day throughout the week for at least an hour. The second half of the lesson was the practical half as each apprentice was required to put what they had learned to practical demonstration before they would be allowed to slip off to their next lesson. Aikino wouldn't be one of the first to leave. But he wasn't one of the last. He happily noted to himself that Tav never left before him. The trickster had to run to catch up to the rest of the class as the teacher put it that morning.

* * *

Tav stayed for another reason. He needed to be able to setup a mental force field like the one that had saved him and the other four just years ago. He didn't know why. Nevertheless something propelled him forward. He felt that it would be needed someday soon, and he didn't know if he'd be able to do it without draining himself.

The rest of the day passed mostly without incident, one of the programming teachers scolded him for not paying attention his mind having drifted to the meditation instructor's words. "If you immediately identify the bulkhead is breached then the rupture was sealed a long time ago."

"I just finished asking the class which looping structure to use in this instance." he said pointing to the code on the overhead projector. Annoying given the ship had the capability of displaying three-dimensional holograms but some of the instructors insisted on using materials prepared decades earlier with older technology. I quickly looked at the code already written and the problem statement, and replied. "Since we are performing simple counting I would say a _for_ loop with an _if_ statement to watch for the condition specified to stop the loop." Tav personally would have preferred a nice recursive function but they hadn't covered those yet.

The teacher nodded and moved onto the rest of the lesson going over using loops to fill multidimensional arrays, and at least four other topics that Tav knew wouldn't be needed for most of the group.

Tav knew programming was probably his best subject. He just wished the teacher could handle actually teaching a little better. The developer program the class used was a decent tool, but the constant refinement and updating made the teacher uneasy because of the older problems with versions that always broke when updates came out. In reality if he had sat down and actually looked to understand why it did what it did he might have realized that it was doing exactly as it had been designed, keeping track of all the little details that would normally trip up programmers writing large programs in a less advanced editor.

The assignments ranged from fascinating to boring and back. Occasionally the difficulty of the assignment was due to its ambiguity, the problem being vague and open to interpretation. Tav loved to hate those assignments, because the ambiguity gave him creative license to do just about anything, which meant he had a chance of giving her exactly what she wanted or giving her an interesting solution that solved the requirements but not in the way she wanted.

He slipped out of his reverie just as the instructor was wrapping up the lesson and handing out the assignment something to do with magic squares, a mathematical concept involving a three by three grid numbered one through nine in which each row column and diagonal would then, when summed equal fifteen. Tav packed up his things, disengaged his portable storage from the school's computer returning control of the system to the schools operating system.

_What was that the meditation instructor had said?_ He thought. _If I immediately knew the bulkhead was breached then the ruptured was sealed long ago._ If I can recognize the problem then the solution has been within my grasp for an even longer time. He doubted this was the only interpretation but for now it would suffice.

Aikino returned to the room before Tav did hoping he'd have a few minutes to plan his retaliation for the morning's cold shower, perhaps he could get the ships computer to selectively route Tav through secondary and tertiary corridors effectively giving him the scenic and longer route. They knew how to keep their pranks from getting in the way so they always insured that any tampering with ship systems only targeted each other and they programmed them to reverse the millisecond a city wide alert was issued. They also approved them through the commander of the city who laughingly approved most of them after review.

"Nice job with the shower Tav" Ike said not even looking up as Tav walked into the room. Aikino grudgingly admitted to himself that it was a bit impressive considering Tav had lived on a mostly agricultural world before being introduced to the cityship.

"Oh you liked that huh?"

"So, how did you manage to override the bio lock on personal settings?" He had a few pranks on some of the others he wished to try.

"Easily, convinced the computer that this…" he paused holding up a tablet that had biosensors continuing "...was the shower control then I used your hand to change the settings."

"High and low tech solution, shame it requires that the victim be asleep in the same room." He'd send a memo to the captain about getting some of the programs changed to make sure that the individual changing settings was indeed conscious before allowing them. Another reason their pranks were allowed to continue was they often brought to light security concerns that could be plugged once the prank was finished.


	4. Tu'ux a Kajal Part B

**Chapter 4 - Tu'ux a kajal? Part B**

The first three gates they had dialed they sent through mining robots which would gather reactor fuel, metals to finish a few areas of the ship and minerals for the air scrubbers. The ship would exit FTL within the galaxy every day for an hour to connect the gate and receive a report the FTL drive was designed to produce a field that pushed particles around the ship similar to the way wings on aircraft pushed air over and under the wing to generate lift, though in space such lift would not be needed it could be used to maneuver a ship through particle fields at FTL speeds. Rather than trying to push objects larger than specs of dust out of the way the field instead pushed the ship out of the way. Dust would flare up against the fields which caused a rather spectacular light display from the few windows the structure could afford.

Tav looked at the adaptive energy field resembling blue liquid; he grabbed his pack and joined the team that would be going through the gate. Three weeks ago Amelius had suggested him as potential candidate for the mission and now here he was, the star gates they'd sent ahead to the planets would be picked up on the way through the galaxy, they couldn't afford to leave them there. The probes they had sent out with the gates were programmed to find specific deposits which would be used to stock and fuel their ship for the long journey. Though much of the ship was incomplete from their hasty departure, the amazing part was the size of the city. They had built it to contain many more people but had to leave before it was finished. On the plus side they had most of the supplies they would need to fully finish construction while on their mostly self-imposed exodus. They had not even found bacterial life on any the planets they had surveyed thus far and the only planet with a suitable atmosphere for humanoids was the one with the rather large pyramid on it, which was where he was going to be headed shortly.

* * *

Stepping through the barrier into the stasis bubble behind the stargate just inside hyperspace the Alteran science contingent barely noticed the transition between the ship and planet. Though the results where a bit more dramatic than usual considering the long range and low power amounts involved. Their individual stasis bubbles accelerated by the initial inertia cheat from stepping into the gate had a less than stable deceleration from the hastily constructed and inferior model that had been dropped by the hyperspace probe a short distance from the pyramid. The result would have been almost comical if not for the seriousness as they were ejected forcefully from the barrier.

Taking stock of the situation they picked themselves up dusted off and did a quick inventory and status report to see the damages if any.

"Just a sprained wrist, some injured pride and a broken screen on one of the tablets. Recommend looking into holographic displays in the future. We are all go from here you can cut power to the gate." Commander Cimera reported back.

"So what do you think that is?" Ike nudged Tav looking off at the pyramid about four hundred meters from the gate.

"Looks like a pyramid. How should I know? I just got here." Tav picked up his pack again looking at his friend and brother. They had pulled way too many pranks on each other and their shipmates to be anything less than brothers at this point. "Want to go check it out?" He grinned.

Several others had already begun making their way towards the small opening on one side of the pyramid. They would setup a base about halfway there before allowing the scientist to get at everything.

"I'm detecting trace amounts of background radiation" Amelius looked at tablet the nice big screen displaying easily understandable gauges which clearly labeled showed everything slightly above normal but still in the green.

"Prepare your team to enter that pyramid. We don't have long to study it and we want to know as much as we can before we have to leave." Cimera the tactical commander stated before turning to go oversee the camp setup. Tactical didn't like unnecessary risks, most of them showed this by being rather blunt and undiplomatic when dealing with others and Cimera was no exception.

Amelius doubted there would be anything of technological value inside as they weren't getting any significant power readings from anywhere. He brought Ike and Tav along just in case but still. There didn't appear to be any significant markings of any kind on the outer surface. Perhaps inside would prove better luck. "Ike, Tav, Auriel, Iantha" he called the team over to join the two from tactical support already following him around. Ike and Tav were systems experts, Auriel and Iantha, linguistics and archeology respectively. "Alright let's make this as thorough as we can in the short time we have. Ike and Tav will follow in case we do come across a computer Auriel your there for linguistics if something speaks we need translation and Iantha you're here for any carvings or writings or other evidence of civilization other than that behemoth of a pyramid. Tactical wants this as painless as possible. I won't pretend to know what to order them to do. Let's move."

The team of seven approached the entry way which sloped up and a comfortable enough angle that it wouldn't be difficult running back up. But kept going on long enough that what was inside couldn't be seen directly from outside.

"Is that?" Ike stepped back with his tablet turning to Amelius, "Hey, Amy I'm picking up Lepton neutrino emissions"

"Impossible, Lepton neutrinos shouldn't be moving slow enough to be detected by this equipment." The scientist visibly irritated replied retrieving his own scanner, "And my name is Amelius."

Tav shook his head from side to side, "Shouldn't egg him on Ike."

Ike was a passable scientist when He wasn't emulating a trickster god, which wasn't often. Usually his pranks did have a practical purpose though and he rarely pulled one on someone who didn't fully deserve whatever it was.

The constant bombardment of low level radiation while not damaging to them at the moment was enough to have prevented anything but the most basic cells to have arisen in the galaxy around them. Regardless there was still some intelligence in this galaxy or the pyramid would not be where it was. So onward they went deeper inside.

The tunnel abruptly came to an end to be replaced with a large open cavern mostly lit by the glowing lights that shimmered from leptons passing through the slightly reactive substance in the stalagmites that rose from a rather very dark pit up from which also rose a narrow walkway and a central pedestal on which sat a rather human looking emerald skull.

Iantha and Auriel were rather excited upon seeing that little piece of culture, both carefully made their way across the narrow walkway to the central pedestal, which seemed rather large now that Tav looked. Though he could have done without the crystal skull, it wasn't even a real skull, but it still made him a feel queasy. He hoped a shield wouldn't be needed today.

Everyone else made their way across following the two ladies. Once they got there they setup scanning equipment and took a look around.

While they weren't looking Auriel had bent to look directly into the eye sockets of the emerald skull which seemed to have some sort of light pattern dancing within it quickly built in intensity before bursting outward engulfing the entire group temporarily phasing them into a pocket dimension between normal space and a highly pressurized dimension. Of the four sensors they'd set up only the two they were currently holding when the field expanded phased with them. The rest remaining in normal space detected a brief surge in muon leptons before it subsided. From the depths below the platform a towering figure of mist sprang forth. It examined them for a moment before speaking, "Tu'ux a Kajal?"

Iantha stepped forwards, "I got this" she whispered, "It asked who we are"

"We are the Altera, where once there stood one, then two; we are one of the two but were cast out by our siblings.

"We have met your form before, though it has been a long time since you kind met with us. We are pleased to talk with your form once again. We have brought you here to converse for we cannot maintain our form within your realm for long, when you wish to return to the world outside the pyramid look into the eyes of the skull again."

"What are you?" Amelius asked first.

"The form you see before you is only an extension of my being, in my natural realm my people would resemble liquid ice. There are few planets in your dimension on which we could exist in our natural form. All of which would be fatal to your bodies. This used to be one such place many years ago." The being before them began to shrink as it moved towards the walkway condensing its form into a more humanoid shape.

"This structure was placed here to watch and wait for your arrival when you were first detected in your galaxy." It left out the part where they had been asked to keep watch over them by an even older race.

Sensing the coming question the now standard human sized mist being before them spoke, "An exchange of technology would be meaningless to both our peoples as our technologies have been developed for different purposes and different dimensions. However if you wish a cultural and historical exchange could be arranged."

"Do you know if anyone else left our galaxy?" Aikino spoke quickly before Amelius could say something else.

"Three other such vessels left your galaxy before you," The alien said before bringing up a galaxy chart above their heads before continuing, "one an even more primitive vessel than yours over seven thousand years ago, and another two just a few years before you. They skipped this galaxy and should be arriving at the next one soon."

The map above their heads reformed to show a closer view of the three local galaxies, one their former home, one they were currently surveying, and the next just slightly farther from the current galaxy. Then a line showing the path of their own vessel leaving the galaxy for this one appeared followed by another two lines so close together they almost formed one thick line shot out from another area of their former home passing over the galaxy to pause still barely moving heading towards the next. And finally a fourth line from the original home planet shot out this one going off into the distance before disappearing off the display.

The mist wavered for a moment adopting a distracted look before reforming slightly more solid, "When your ship reaches the other side of this galaxy there is another planet with a pyramid such as this. Stop above it and we will move your ship to the other two. At that time decide who you wish to exchange with us to learn about our culture and history." It then jumped over the edge of the platform and spread out disappearing.

* * *

**Beyogi!** Hahahaha you make me happy!

No unfortunately for the Goa'uld they are native to avalona/milkyway. Fortunately for the Ancients erm I mean Altera this isn't Avalona. This is a barren galaxy just off to the side of their original galaxy. Which while surprisingly none of them have surveyed yet it's understandable given that they'd only just finished colonizing when their supposed brothers and sisters betrayed them. I've got ideas about that betrayal too. There's more happening than just a simple religious disagreement.

As for the altera wiping out all life… they didn't do that good a job of it, did they. I mean sure the goa'uld dominated sometime after the plague but did you see the various other species that were popping up all over the place? I think it more likely that the ancients used the device when seeding worlds to ensure nothing like the wraith would happen. Also given that the device was available it then implies things. First if they had it before the plague why did they not use it against the wraith or even as a precaution before seeding Pegasus? Second, if they didn't build it until after why build it at all considering it doesn't seem like it was ever actually used. And third if they did use it in the initial colonization efforts of the galaxy but not in Pegasus to eliminate the iratus bug/pre-wraith then something either made them forget about it or the lanteans aren't the same ancients.

I sincerely promise I will pound these altera through the forge soon. But I still want to give them at least some taste of peace before doing so.

Well I'm happy with this chapter, I was able to incorporate some older work I never released and revived a character from another story I had sitting in my docs that had gone nowhere because of it being a bad story.

I'm beginning to regret killing Arwen so quickly after introducing him… He seemed quite likable.

As for the mist boys… wiki/Omeyocan


	5. Forgotten people and Broken systems

**Chapter 5** – Forgotten people and broken systems.

Thelya walked down the corridor, the floor was warm from the soft hum that the ships engines pushed through the ship. She had gotten used to walking in her spare time exploring the, her city. She knew the top few decks were off limits so instead she went down. She'd already visited many of the empty rooms between her quarters and here. When she first arrived she was hardly ever let out of the dorm room, she could hardly remember her old home anymore, every now and then, if she tried really hard, she could just barely remember sitting on the porch swing that last summer, or following Tav around.

She knew she should probably spend the time in her room going over the meditations the cryptic instructor gave them every evening on the eighth day of the week. But she never could sit still long enough and her mind never calmed with those breathing exercises, instead she found running through the corridors usually cleared her mind much easier. Right now though she wasn't running she was walking she'd taken a left turn a few corridors back then a right or was it left she wasn't sure.

The part that started to annoy her was that she wasn't recognizing some of the corridors now and not all the lights were on. The familiar letters on the bulkheads telling what deck and section she was in were missing as well. She vaguely remembered being told to watch where she went while they didn't mind her wandering the populated areas of the city ship; the unpopulated areas were not finished, and not always fully lit. When the ship shuddered protesting at something, before the familiar jolt of dropping out of FTL was felt. She felt her pulse start to rise but she quickly suppressed the anxiety, she would get back to her quarters she told herself.

* * *

"Get me details people," Captain Fenri barked entering the bridge, "I want to know why we aren't moving, and if there is any damage"

"Seems we hit a bump in the road sir, sensors indicate that a slight fluctuation formed in our FTL field sir."

"I suppose it doesn't help that we are flying an overly large fat bird or that it is unfinished." One of the engineers muttered.

The captain settled into his command chair. He pulled up the crew reports on his tablet. "We're missing one of the civilians, see if internal sensors can find her, she didn't report from her quarters when the alert sounded. Send out some search parties as well."

"I'm detecting a coolant leak in one of the lower levels. I'm having trouble pinpointing the location though because sensors in that area are down or haven't been installed yet. A maintenance crew has been dispatched."

"Sir you aren't going to like this." One of the bridge officers pulled up an internal sensor log forwarding it to his tablet.

"Your right Jim I don't." the sensor log showed a life sign flickering as it went between sensors before eventually disappearing beyond the range of detection on the same deck as the coolant leak. He hoped the girl had the sense to avoid the stuff. It had a tendency to irritate the skin and could have damaging effects if breathed.

They had over three hundred thousand rooms on this boat at least he could rule out the ones where the sensors were working.

* * *

Someone else was making use of all the distractions; humming to himself he went and pulled a small tube out of a stasis chamber by the time the high council discovered his work it would be far too late to stop. He'd been waiting for a distraction like this for the past 4 years. Ianas checked the backup power supply he'd spent so long charging. This had better work. He bent down next to the device shoved the vial in then took a crystal out of his pocket and placed it into a slot on the device. The process would take a few hours but it would be before the coolant leak was fixed.

He was sure it would work this time. Having used a different kind of cell than the ones they had tried to use previously. Those few attempts he'd been allowed failed as the body built in the machine didn't event take a breath. The sensors could just barely detect a difference between these and the previous ones, these reacted more like normal living tissue than in the other trials there was a faint energy reading in one of the upper spectrums.

He examined the face forming beneath the clear, hard polycarbonate viewing port. Yes this was going nicely.

* * *

Thelya looked down the hall seeing the coolant spreading slowly like a low misty cloud on the deck plate. Cursing her luck, out of the five hundred decks on this ship she had to pick this one. She turned and ran hoping to get to the stairs or one of the maintenance hatches so she could climb up a floor but then she saw the gaseous mist coming from the other direction. She looked around saw another corridor just a little bit in front of the mist in the other direction. Running she barely made it to the corridor opening, she angled turning to run down that corridor she could see the coolant mist at the other end but there was a door near the middle of the corridor she ran to it.

Pushing the button to open it she ran inside closing the door. She would have a short amount of time in the room it was sealed off from the coolant but she could tell that the air wasn't circulating. She calmed herself and looked around the room for anything that could help her.

At the other end of the room was a computer terminal it hadn't been tied into the system yet and was dark. There was a box next to it that was open it showed various cables color coded and in specific shapes which would help her connect the terminal to the connectors in the floor. Another box on its side showed the pedestal the computer usually sat on. It would be too time consuming and difficult for her to thread the wires through the pedestal into the floor, and far too heavy to lift the terminal and pedestal upright and set it into the usual position. Instead she would try to connect it on the floor where it lay. She walked over quickly inventorying the pieces. She was a little dismayed to discover that one of the data ports in the floor was missing its connector. She would have to splice the wires which would be difficult unless there where some tools in another one of the boxes.

* * *

"What do you mean we won't be back in FTL for a day?" Fenri glared at the sensor technician.

"The FTL drive apparently doesn't like unexpected or sudden changes in gravitational fields It'll take us a day to clear this region at maximum sublight at which point we can reinitialize the FTL. We could adjust the field to work around these fluctuations however that would also take a day and would only result in the FTL drive destabilizing again once the fluctuations dissipate and the space-time lattice returns to normal." At one time their scientist would have referred to it as a rips or ripples in the fabric of space time but fabric was such a two dimensional term for something that was better represented using three dimensions.

"Have we found the girl yet?" Fenri asked the bridge for the tenth time that hour.

"Search is still ongoing, she's still alive we just can't tell where exactly the sensors are picking up a faint reading from the middle of the cloud of coolant." One of the officers replied. "We've cleared the areas we can without environmental suits because of that coolant leak. The vents should start to filter it out of the corridors soon as we seal the leak."

Well thought the captain. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Soon as the next resource shipment arrived through the gate from the mining operation he'd ask the council if they could drop out of FTL for a day or two to work on installing systems that should have been in place before leaving.

* * *

Just a short time more and the clone would be finished. He was almost surprised at how well this was working. The clone was breathing and there was a heartbeat. The program was supposed to have gradually uploaded the stored brain pattern to the clone hopefully the calmly blinking eyes indicated this had gone well. The last time the clone seemed to have been panicking before being removed from the chamber and dying before taking a breath on its own.

Ianas settled down to look at the readings, before he could really get into them though the councilor for research and development walked in distracting him. He would have to stall, prevent her from looking to closely at the chamber.

"Shame this didn't work, we had such high hopes for the project." She started conversationally.

A bit nervous he tried to casually move in-between her and the cloning bed. "Yes, shame. I invested a lot of time into this."

"I might be able to get them to reconsider in time." She eased up onto one of the diagnostic beds.

"It would take a very long time, Tyrien made it quite clear that as long as he was the deciding factor of the council he would veto this line of research." He sighed.

"Giving those minds another chance to contribute when they were ended so suddenly in the evacuation effort is not something we should dismiss lightly Ianus. I will do what I can just promise you'll wait until I can clear the restriction again."

"It may be too late for that" Ianus muttered as the pod behind him slid silently open.

* * *

Thelya found something that would work to strip the wires and there were a few wire caps down in the box below. It seemed a rule of construction that no matter what wire caps would always end up lying around everywhere. She braced herself and stripped the appropriate wires on in the floor then the ones from the connectors. She proceeded to twist the cap onto the wires then connected everything else coming out of the floor to one of the longer cables that would lead to the terminal.

Struggling to move the heavy terminal around the deck plating she repositioned it so the access port on the back was closer to the wires she was messing with, and began connecting everything in the order the teacher had told them. Finally everything connected properly. She hit the power button and waited before quickly hitting it again cursing seeing the sparks dropping from the splice. She'd connected the power cables backwards she carefully undid the power connecter then swapped the wires, resetting the connection before plugging it back in and turning the terminal back on.

* * *

Arwen blinked. He remembered dying; no it was a second hand memory that's odd. He saw himself getting shot in the back no less. Then standing back up and holding his hand out in front of himself and the energy weapons just glancing off to the sides. Odd He didn't remember doing that He didn't even remember leaving for the mission. Last thing he truly remembered himself doing was getting the brain scan. That must mean. He sat up and He looked around.

He sat there for what felt like ten minutes checking everything over. Then opened his mouth and tried to say something and all that come out was a hoarse croak.

"Arwen!" he heard a gasp. Then an angry voice, "Ianas, we shall talk later about this. For now get him some clothes would you." Her face was quite red at the last line.

Arwen looked down again noticing he didn't have any clothes on well everything was fine and dandy downstairs yes-sir, he finally managed to say three words. "Ianus, clothes now."

* * *

"Sir, I'm getting a terminal login from compartment four-thirty-seven on the deck that's currently flooded with coolant."

"Well! See if you can get me a comlink to that compartment or terminal!" Fenri practically shouted happily.

"Should be able to; let me send her instructions on what to do to enable the audio pickup."

Fenri waited impatiently for what felt like hours but was only five minutes before he heard the young girls voice over the intercom shakily say, "Hello?"

"Thelya? This is captain fenri, we should have the coolant clear in," he looked down at the report on his tablet, "in two hours ok? Just stay put and we'll have a group outside to guide you back to your quarters. Everything's ok now." His rich voice soothed and comforted her. Well if he had to be a captain of a ship full of kids it helped to have a voice like General Hammond's

* * *

**Notes:** Cityship information: 8km diameter, 2km height, 1 m hull thickness, giving 4 meters for each deck there are 500 decks, each deck holds somewhere between 400 and 800 compartments, some compartments span 2 or more decks depending on what the space was designed for. There is no central computer core; computing power is distributed throughout the ship. The ship database is ingeniously stored on crystals that as a side effect glow with a nice warm white light these line every corridor of the ship and are always on in some capacity.

Theyla was rescued from that planet at age 3, Tav was 8, respectively this makes their current ages 12 and 17


	6. Suspicions Part A

**My apologies to Beyogi my haste to merge chapters resulted in his previous reviews being attached to the new chapters preventing him from posting a new review for the new chapters.**

**Beyogi's review for chapter 4: **_I definitely liked the way you used those mayan aliens. Were they the Furlingers? I'm not so sure about that no-life-Galaxy, but whatever. The interesting part is that there are apparently others in another Galaxy. I gather that's the Milky Way. I hope to learn more about those._

_Anyway, good luck writing :)_

**_If they _**_aren't the furlings they are at least close cousins or representatives for the furling race. The no-life galaxy is that way because of two things. It's a satellite galaxy of their home galaxy. Meaning it's smaller and closer than other galaxies, and the cluster at the center of the galaxy is unstable in that as it rotates it irradiates the stars in the galaxy with harmful radiation that breaks down life. The omeyocan may also have something to do with that. I'll probably put in some dialog explaining better when they reach the other side of the galaxy and talk with the again Omeyocan. As for the others, there are two additional groups. The closer of which our city-ship will be sent to join shortly, the further one we may not meet for a while depending on how things work out but they aren't in Avalona or the milky way galaxy._

_I need to start including dates or something… Alteran date system: counting years since leaving home galaxy._

* * *

**Chapter 6 – Suspicions**

**1 day after cloning. Alteran date: year 6, month 4, day 3, time 14:00**

"Ianas, the council is concerned with your defiance of the restrictions we've placed on this area of research, the results of which we see on the screen before us." The councilor motioned to the display which showed the research lab where the clone of Arwen was sitting calmly.

"And it worked He is demonstrating that not only does he have the physical appearance of Arwen but has also accessed the memories of the original donor. His brain activity shows only minimal deviation from that of the original Arwen." Ianas spoke enthusiastically and with a passion that befits one who is devoted to scientific pursuits with no regard for consequences.

"Enough, I will not have you or anyone else treating sentient life lightly." High Councilor Tyrien stood hands on the council table.

"No one is treating sentient life lightly." Ianas interrupted in the pause but this was probably a mistake for him to have done as the High Councilor glared at him.

"You are!" His voice filled with contempt as he gestured at the video feed. "Now we have this!"

"Ianas you leave this council with no further option than to restrict your computer and lab access from any and all materials related to biology and cloning immediately." One of the female council members shook her head as she pressed the buttons on the control console in front of her which would carry out the sentence.

"After Arwen has been cleared by medical he will be reintegrated with the crew."

"Behave Ianas." Tria looked at him sadly.

Ianas let the council room for his quarters feeling conflicted.

* * *

**Alteran date: year 6, month 4, day 3, time 14:30**

It was almost comical the first time he tried to stand up his legs had given way underneath him and he'd fallen flat. Ianas and Tria had to help him with his clothing. He thought he was getting used to his body but it would be a while before he truly felt comfortable again.

He'd been sitting here in a meditative pose for about three hours now since the council had informed Ianas that his presence was required. Hopefully he'd be able to get out of here soon.

Arwen had been sitting in the lab for some time now and he was getting bored. He needed to eat and exercise to build up his strength. He could feel his weakness and the instability of the new body. He cursed inwardly it was going to be a long road to conditioning himself back into some semblance of fitness. Sure he had all the muscles and they all gave the impression that he was fit. But every cell in his body was brand new and he was still unsteady on his feet. His brain needed time to become familiar with all the nerves and muscles in his body.

He was just about to lie back down on the medical bed when the door opened revealing two security personnel and a medical team followed by Councilor Tria.

"Sorry about the wait Arwen. Ianas wasn't supposed to clone you at least not just yet. In doing so, he disobeyed a direct order from the high council and things happened."

Orvin one of the medical personnel looked at Tria oddly. "We've yet to determine if he maintains enough of Arwen's original baselines to be Arwen."

"If the body is simply hardware, and the brain contains the software then all that was Arwen has been downloaded into the hardware before you." Tria replied smoothly.

"We know that is not truly the case as the earlier attempts to do just that failed miserably as the Hardware as you put it failed to even start."

The other medical person from the team had pulled out his tablet and begun interfacing with the bio-bed that Arwen was sitting on. "Everything is indicating a match with pre mission recorded vitals of Arwen. Though, I'm detecting a slight atrophy in the arms and legs, and slight nervous system instabilities. I would suggest some exercise in the gym to counteract it."

"Good proceed with the cognitive tests then we will schedule the aptitude tests for tomorrow."

After an hour of answering questions Arwen was beginning to show signs of irritation. He asked after the third tissue sample, "How much more poking and prodding can you do?"

"Oh you don't know, Tyrien is livid I wouldn't put it past him to order a complete dissection." One of the medical team muttered.

"Seriously what's so interesting that required you taking three tissue samples?"

"Well, aside from the fact that all your cells look as young as those of a five day old baby. They start to deteriorate almost immediately after being separated from your body. You're stable as far as I can tell. But the samples age rapidly after we remove them."

"Best I can do right now is to keep an eye on it. If they start showing better resilience after a few days then I declare you human and fully capable. 'Till then you're my guinea pig. I expect you to stop by my lab daily." He nodded to security to make sure they understood, and then turned to Tria. "He's clear"

"Good, next stop lunch, then quarters." Tria announced dragging Arwen out the door.

"You'll be scheduled for aptitude testing tomorrow."

"But I already took aptitude tests."

"Not in this body you haven't besides. You may find you're better suited to another department, like mine."

"Fine…"

* * *

**Alteran date: year 6, month 4, day 3, time 18:00**

Eating was less than interesting; his stomach was new so they had to start with something like a milkshake. Which was bland at best, but he chugged it down. He would be on an almost baby food diet for the next few weeks until the doctors where confident his internals could handle more solid food.

The fun part was the stares he got from people; here was Arwen back from the dead. Not everyone was aware of what had happened with Ianas and the cloning lab.

Arwen spent most of that week between building strength and sleeping.

* * *

**Alteran date: year 6, month 4, day 17, time 16:34**

Tav walked into the mess for breakfast, while it wasn't morning according to the clocks, it was morning for him. His schedule had him set to be active for the last 8 hours of the day and the first 8 hours of the next.

He got his food from the dispensers and moved to his usual table. Sitting down without really paying attention he started to eat. It took him three minutes before he finally looked up and saw who was sitting across from him.

He froze not sure of what to say. Staring rather intently at the impossible person sitting there drinking his nutrition shake. "Can't be…"

"You died." The half formed whisper fell from his lips.

"Huh? Well the reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated." Tav coughed at the response.

"You… How… you don't… you look exactly the same." Tav barely managed to say this having apparently come down with a rare and sudden case of stuttering.

"I don't remember you. Should I?" Arwen asked from across the table.

"You saved my life and four others."

Arwen's clone appeared to be the same age as Arwen was when he died on the planet. If he were to use Arwen's birthday to determine age he'd be twenty-eight now, but as a clone his age was little over 15 days. He appeared however to be the exact same age as Tav sitting across from each other.

Arwen lifted his head up at that announcement eyes wide open. "That was your memory." Ianas had somehow included Tav's memory of the original Arwen's death.

Tav seemed a bit confused before remembering when Ianas had asked him two years ago for a copy of the memory from his escape. "So it worked then."

"I'll say. Though Medical won't let me out of their sights for longer than an hour or two."

Tav knew how bad the Medical people could be with their pet projects. "Ach, I know how they can get. Should have seen them fussing over me after I scraped my knees on that mining world a few months ago. Something about wanting to make sure I didn't get infected with some unknown bacteria."

"So, how long since I've been gone, and how long have we been out here?" Arwen asked as no one had seen fit to tell him.

"Um, we left three years after you rescued us; we've been traveling for six."

Tav watched Arwen process all this. He trusted Arwen when Arwen first found them ten years ago. He'd been eight then, barely managing to escape the ridiculous soldier that had invaded his home with Thelya. He didn't regret it, and he still trusted him now.

"I'm supposed to get the updated results from my aptitude test back sometime today." Arwen looked grim. "They won't let me do anything until then."

"I've got another hour or two until I need to be to my lab. Want to go bug Aikino? He's my roommate."

Arwen looked at him; Aikino was something like a little brother to Arwen. "They put you with that trickster?"

"Hah, I give as much if not more as I get from him."

* * *

**Alteran date: year 6, month 5, day 1, time 10:00**

The captain was particularly annoyed that morning, as his usual shower had been freezing cold. On requesting repair teams check it out, he had discovered that all the showers on his deck were cold that morning.

His first thought that morning was to call the two tricksters of the city up to his office to see if they had anything to do with the situation. Normally they would at least send him a notification of their plans but he had to be sure.

"Aikino, Tav" he looked both of them in the eyes, "Did either of you have anything to do with the cold showers this morning?" He asked after motioning for them to sit in front of the desk.

"No sir." Both replied one after the other.

"We would have notified you in advance sir, and would have made certain that it wouldn't affect your quarter's sir." Aikino replied politely.

Fenri sighed. "Just wanted to make sure, I know you boy's keep me in the loop on your pranks if it is something that could affect ships systems. If you didn't I would have locked down your computer access years ago. Thanks for that."

"With your permission sir we'll investigate the computers and see what we can find." Tav offered.

"Do it. Send me a message first thing." Fenri dismissed them from his office.

Later in the day the ship had come to a screeching halt, again, dropping out of FTL. Luckily, this time there were no coolant leaks and all the civilians where accounted for in their quarters. They had just gotten the FTL back up and were on their way again when the lights in the hallways started flickering.

Fenri arrived at ops shortly after. "Give me a status report."

"Someone is going through the database captain. We've managed to lock them out of sensitive areas. But a section of the research database has been compromised we had to manually disconnect it from the rest."

A few moments later the lights on the bridge visibly dimmed brightened for a moment then went back to normal.

"What was that?" Fenri asked going over to the ship operations console.

"One of the four main generators just shut down the computer reports that it detected an overload and initiated shutdown procedures to prevent damage to the ship."

"My ship is falling apart people and I want to know why." Fenri stood at the command chair on the looking around at the men and women working at the stations around the bridge.

They'd just picked up the last gate after cleaning up after themselves on the small planetoid removing what traces they could of the mining operation before shuttling the gate back up to the city. They were just a months away from the last stop in this galaxy, which would propel them onward to meet up with the other two ships that the alien pyramid's sensors had detected.

* * *

**Alteran date: year 6, month 5, day 1, time 12:00**

Tav still a bit groggy from sleep sat up quickly bumping his head on the bed above him. Groaning he reached over and hit the com answering the incoming call.

"Tav, Aikino report to my office soon as you're both awake."

"Yes sir." Tav responded half yawning.

Tav woke Aikino up and told him the captain wanted to see them in his office as soon as possible.

* * *

**Alteran date: year 6, month 5, day 1, time 14:00**

Tav and Aikino were both digging their way through a list of access commands that had been issued throughout the ship for the past week. Some of the secondary subroutines had been corrupted; Tav marked them for restoring from backup before moving onto the next in the list.

Aikino was getting worried looking at the growing list of damaged or corrupted system files. Someone had been sabotaging these for a while now. But they still didn't have the access code of the person who was doing it.

They were getting close when they triggered something in the database which tried to self-destruct the program they were tracking. Aikino quickly hit a button on the screen which issued a command to forcefully disconnect the links between the databases, before sending a message to the bridge that the research database had been compromised.

One advantage to the distributed system they had was that faults in one section of their network could be quickly quarantined without affecting all the computers on the ship. The only central part of the system was a server which contained credentials for all the users its programming could only be edited by physically pulling a chip out and rewriting the pathway with a specialized tool.

This was annoying but it narrowed down the list of suspects to those who had access to that particular database. And even further to those who had the knowledge to program such a thing.

Aikino looked grimly at Tav they had managed to pull the plug just in time to prevent the malicious little script from taking out the reactor safety protocols.


	7. Investigations Part B

**Chapter 7 – investigations, or descent and rebirth.**

_Alteran date: year 6, month 5, day 1, time 14:30_

"That was close." Tav breathed slumped over chin resting on the edge of the console he was tired having only slept a few hours before being called into the captain's office and then spending the hours they had tracking down access codes. He was also very angry. Someone had just tried to blow up Caelias his city!

Aikino felt the same anger but his was tinged with a brief hint of satisfaction. The last trace had managed to pull three command codes from the access logs for the database where the malicious script had been hidden. "I've got three prime suspects. Can't say I'm happy with whom they are but I am satisfied that we narrowed it down to three. Let's get these to Captain Fenri."

The young men locked the terminals after setting the repair programs to the task of restoring the damaged subroutines from backups. The damage to the research database would have to be repaired later. Quite a few projects would be set back they would have to go through each backup manually from a quarantined station depending on how far back the virus had been added to the database.

Luckily the residual paranoia leftover from their flight away from their home galaxy had kept the numerous protections and firewalls operating over most of the distributed database with only a few exceptions being the systems they'd been installing for the past year since their mining operations had been bringing in resources that enabled them to do so.

* * *

Amelius was working in one of the joint tactical science labs with Artiem Lal going over their adjustments to the experimental stun weapons when the lights flickered and the ship dropped out of FTL.

"Amelius, the terminal just locked out the research database."

"Do we still have the files for the stun settings open?"

"Yes, but I won't be able to save our changes until the research database comes back online."

"What about the tactical department's storage?"

"That's locked out as well, but still online."

He didn't want to use this but their last test seemed to have been a success the stun weapon being able to sustain a decent rate of fire while not punishing the batteries that powered it. And they had just managed to calibrate the electrical discharge to levels required to knock out a person without harming them. He pulled out a necklace with a small storage cystal; it was his private research database. He made sure the terminal was disconnected from the city network before running a custom scan to detect viruses and spy software before plugging in the storage unit and copying the files over. Feeling a little easier that a sudden loss of power to the terminal wouldn't wipe the last three days' worth of work from the volatile memory of the terminal he turned to Lal. "Take the prototype and go assist Captain Fenri with whatever annoying pest caused all the databases to lockdown."

Lal nodded grabbing the two hand stun rifle before calling the bridge to inform Fenri she was on her way up and running out the door.

* * *

Thirty minutes later Tav, Aikino, and Lal were seated in Fenris office facing him. Lal was first to talk. "Stun rifle prototype, we just finished it. Amelius thought you might need it in the event of difficulty where non-lethal resolution is desired."

Aikino brought up the three command codes next, "We have three suspects, these three command codes showed up in all the places where the damage was."

Fenri's eyes widened at the information displayed on his computer screen. "Artiem, discreetly gather your security detail and take these three individuals into custody. We don't know yet if all of them were involved or if it was just one or two of them."

Artiem nodded to the commander before turning and walking out of the room.

Aikino leaned over and whispered to Tav, "So, you like her? Cause she gave you the look on the way out." which caused him to blush.

"Aikino, Tav," the captain said nodding to each pulling them out of their private conversation, "You can speculate on Lieutenant Lal's interests later, right now I need a report on the status of our systems, and how long until we can reactivate the FTL drive safely."

"Well sir, the repair programs are still restoring the damaged subroutines from backup and should have reactor safeties up and running in the next hour, FTL will need recalibration by engineering and related subroutines should be restored in two hours." Aikino looked at Tav for the next portion of the report.

"There are still a dozen other systems that are operating at reduced capacity and the research portion of the database will take a solid month of rebuilding, we left the old database intact in case we can restore some of the files but it's quarantined from the rest of the computer network until we wipe and replace it with the backup."

"Can the rest of the databases be safely unlocked?"

"We want to run an extensive scan of each database before opening it back up, in case there are more surprises." Tav answered.

"And if one of them confesses or otherwise confirms our suspicions we can use their code directly track the files accessed and lock them down before they can activate." Aikino interjected.

"We think we can do so without triggering the virus code now that we have access codes." Tav added.

"That's all I needed to know, get to work I want our systems back in working order gentlemen." Fenri dismissed them waiting until they were out the door before letting out a sigh of exhaustion.

He had an entire city worth of people to protect on this harebrained trek across the universe, and while he wasn't close to many of them being the commanding officer of everyone who kept this ship running he considered every individual aboard not only his personal responsibility, but also family, and he didn't and never had taken kindly to threats to his family.

One of his eccentricities afforded by his distinguished position and long years of service allowed him to requisition an older style phone for his office instead of the usual communication panel. He found that every now and then being able to physically drop the handheld communication device onto the receiver afforded some measure of satisfaction when the otherside would hear the audible click and subsequent termination of the communication. It also had the other side effect that his conversations felt more private when only he could hear what the other person was saying.

He picked up his phone now and told the computer to connect him to the leading civilian researcher on artificial intelligence, an old friend of his one Qualia Senn.

"Senn, prepare that presentation for the council, I'm backing your research I don't like viruses messing up my city's systems."

* * *

"I am the presiding member of the council! I demand to know what you're doing here." Tyrien shouted a blood vessel bulging over his forehead and his face red.

"High councilor, we've been directed to take you into custody please come with us."

"I don't think so." Tyrien said bending over his desk as if to press a button on the terminal.

'Oh this is taking too long' Lal thought leveling her stun rifle from the doorway and squeezing the trigger.

Tyrien didn't even see the stun bolt coming, he slumped back down into his chair as the security detail Artiem Lal brought with her stepped into his office and picked him up to carry to the holding cell next to the first two who had left with them.

The first two suspects had come quite willingly and without argument. Ianas knew Lal from a few conversations with Tav over the past few years; he'd only looked at her asked a one word question and then followed them out the door.

The other suspect Phoebe a decent programmer had only nodded grimly to Lal mentioned that she hadn't had lunch yet and asked if they would bring her some.

* * *

Tav stared his screen blankly; they had almost the entire network working on replacing missing safety protocols and control systems. The sheer volume of systems that had been infiltrated and modified by the script without alerting the crew was staggering the program had to have been running since they left celestus.

So far all three command codes had been implicated in some manner but the interesting bit was the timestamp for when Ianas' command code had accessed those areas was after the council had stripped him of those privileges. Both of the other two command codes had been used off and on over the past 5 years.

He needed sleep but before he did he wanted to ask Amelius a few questions.

* * *

Amelius sat in his lab tinkering with a small angular device with a handle when Tav walked in. He looked after finishing whatever he was doing with the device.

"Tav! How can I help you?"

"Do you still have the deprogrammer prototype from the ark?"

"It's over in the storage closet, why?"

"Well someone may have managed to compromise certain high ranking people who may have planted some rather annoying viruses in the network."

"Certain high ranking members of the council might object to its use." Amelius warned, remembering the first time he'd proposed it.

"That won't be an issue." Tav said from the storage room filled with shelves and boxes containing prototypes and broken equipment. "Which one is it?"

"Section F, third shelf from the top it's a small handheld device with a blue and orange crystal."

Tav found it easily taking it and thanking Amelius.

Now just to get it to Lal then he could rest.

* * *

"Those who reject the path will be cleansed in the everlasting fire."

Tav heard the voice from down the hall practically screaming. Well at least he knew the interrogation was going fine.

He walked up to the guard and asked him to open the door. Walking into the room the man who had been yelling snarled at him and sat back down. Tav nodded to Lal before raising his hand with the device in his palm. He pointed the thing at Tyrien and activated it. The light was blinding it filed the room streaming through the window into the hallway behind him. Tav and Lal both squinted and a moment later the light disappeared leaving the three people in the room dazed.

When their vision cleared enough to see the high councilor had sunk to the floor face in his hands. "I couldn't stop myself. What have I done?"

Tav handed the spent device to Lal, "There is enough power left for one more shot, you'll need to replace the power crystal after that." He felt a little weak in the knees the unfocused device had spilled over onto him and Lal some and he still hadn't gotten his sleep in yet. Even the tiny bit of spillover shook him. Tav turned and left the room he was going to go collapse into his bed and ignore the city for his full eight hours.

* * *

Tyrien would have to go through and rethink ever decision he'd made for the past eight years. But he still didn't think he'd change his mind much over Ianas' cloning research. He still felt it was careless and the punishment still stood for ignoring the council's decision instead of petitioning for another hearing. Most of all it would take time before he would be able to trust his own judgment again. It might be best if he stepped down and went with the cultural exchange when they reached the other pyramid.

* * *

**Review Responses:**

Beyogi: Ianas being the namesake of the lantean janus obviously shares much of the same characteristics like that of having to do something even more if told not to.

He's really only banned as long as Tyrien is High councilor Tria said as much or hinted it when she caught him cloning Arwen. The main reason there is such an issue with the cloning research Ianas already told us about with his internal monologue, his previous attempts were considered inhumane because of the perceived suffering of the clones which died on the table after being removed. Plus, one he didn't talk about which came out evil. Interesting story that one, I'll have to write about it, because it involves Tyrien.

StargateFFWriter: Imagine the big grin on my face. It really is an awesome idea, considering it's virtually untouched territory most of what we know is second and third hand accounts by people who are reading about it like it's a history lesson or ancient myth. I'm really surprised that I couldn't find other fanfiction trying to touch it directly.

Aer-ki knows of it.

**General note:** Thanks everyone for reading I'm glad you're all enjoying the show. Also please if I do something truly stupid or start to make characters act in unbelievable ways please tell me, and even if I'm doing fine write a review telling me what you liked about the chapter, what was missing, what you want to know. I'm sure my writing has shown improvement from the first chapter to the latest. This chapter took a bit longer to write, I knew what I wanted to do but getting there was harder than it should have been. Sometimes it feels like the story is alive as I'm writing and it changes from what my mind originally wanted and goes in a different direction.


	8. Answers Part C Redux

**Chapter 8 - Answers**

_Alteran date: year 6, month 5, day 2, time 05:30_

'one down, two to go,' She thought heading over to Ianas' cell, "Ianas, sorry for the wait I need to know why your command codes accessed certain important systems in the past month."

"I have no idea why, I shouldn't even have permission to access anything outside of my section of the research database. Do you have the times those access events occurred?"

Lal nodded affirmation before handing over a tablet that had been carefully modified to remove any possibility of being used to access the cities systems remotely.

He scrolled through the list looking at the latest dates first then the earliest. "Curious the latest and most frequent occurrences happened after my privileges were revoked, making it impossible for me to have been able to get to those parts of the systems. The earliest ones happened right after," he trailed off, looking up. "Do you know the real reason my research was suspended Lal?"

"No, but I get the feeling you're planning to tell me regardless."

"And you would be right; it was the attempt to clone Arwen that partially succeeded. Three years after entering the void I had used a few memory samples from High Councilor Tyrien and a tissue sample from researcher phoebe who I believed to be a close match to some of Arwen's readings before he left. I had successfully reprogrammed the cells with Arwen's DNA and the process was going smoothly right until he left the chamber. At which point he became agitated and started to damage himself and the equipment. After that Tyrien banned the project. Though I believed some contaminant in the sample or a fault in the memory selection process had caused the incident, which could have been resolved with more study, Tyrien refused to consider it. Something he'd seen or heard the clone scream in those minutes before made him very upset that he made the computer erase the memory scan and had the tissue samples from Phoebe destroyed."

"That still doesn't explain much about your access codes being used."

"I think Tyrien may have decided to try and use my codes to frame me. Though uncharacteristic of him I had noticed he has been acting rather more obstructionist than usual."

"You may be right, would you submit willingly to this, she opened her other hand revealing the deconditioning device prototype which had led up to the ark of truth."

"Is that Amelius' work?"

"Yes"

"Carry on, I trust him to create something like that."

For the second time that day Lal triggered the device. It made her mind feel odd and open. She hoped long term exposure to the intense field the device was emitting wouldn't harm her. When the field finally dissipated and the device returned to its inactive state. She blinked a few times before her vision cleared and she could see Amelius staring at it.

"Interesting," he said slowly. "I seem to have recovered a few memories."

She looked at him impatiently, "and?"

"You'll note that I didn't use the Pheobe's samples in Arwen's new clone, nor Tyrien's memories from the event. For some reason I have a discovered that a memory was locked away in my skull of Phoebe trying to condition me into creating a clone of her."

Lal was surprised. "Arwen." She'd had a crush on him when she was younger. "Ianas, thank you for your cooperation, I may have a few more questions for you in a while, but right now I have one more person to see to."

* * *

Lal looked at phoebe eyes narrowed. The deprogramming device hadn't changed her expression of contempt. Despite her earlier cooperation, when the high councilor had been deprogrammed her behavior had changed to that of a caged and very dangerous animal. She had attempted to use the prototype Amelius had made to deprogram her but apparently there was nothing to deprogram.

"You look surprised." She spat out.

"We were under the impression you were a true Alteran who had been compromised, now I see that may have been to early a judgment."

"The path is there for any to follow, whether that path is more or less true than any other matters not to me, I have chosen this one."

"I see. Phoebe Filiacet you are accused of sabotage of this city, interference with a member of the high council and tampering with the memories of a fellow citizen. You are hereby restricted to this cell until a hearing of the council can be scheduled to determine your fate." Lal looked away sadly allowing the cell door to seal shut behind her.

* * *

Tyrien sat in his cell contemplating his decisions since for the last eight years. He knew now why he'd delayed and obstructed many of the projects that had been working on the construction of the city. He'd almost succeeded in preventing its launch. Thankfully Fenri, Tria, and a few others had been circumventing him even without all the resources they needed to finish the city completely they had managed to fast track the engines, reactors, and hull enough that when it came time for them to leave the ship had been able to do so successfully.

He regretted not being himself then, If he had perhaps they would have been better prepared. But since they hadn't been, and the ship barely space worthy with incomplete life support systems and a half-finished computer network, they'd been forced to stop at the smaller satellite galaxy instead of going around it. If they had gone around it they would have been permanently behind the other two ships, and they would have never made their first contact with the Omeyecan.

At least from what had been intended to hinder they had instead used to make new friends. There was more that would weigh heavily on his conscience the city had been designed to carry many more than it was supporting, which in a way was another blessing, considering the state the life support systems had been in when they left. But again had he been himself perhaps they he would have authorized larger rescue missions to retrieve civilians caught behind enemy lines.

It was all distressing the only thing keeping him from breaking down completely was the meditation exercises he'd been taught when he was younger. They allowed him to distance himself from his memories, to take them and lock them away until he could deal with them one at a time, instead of being overpowered by them.

He had barely started to reevaluate his life and actions when an explosion ripped through the brig flinging Lal and the soldiers standing guard away from the cell at the end of the hall. Alarms sounded a second later.

* * *

**Flashback - 2 years before leaving Celestas**

"Enter," Tyrien commanded the young woman who had just returned from off world where he had been on a mission to gather intelligence about the enemy.

"High councilor" the young woman nodded before sitting.

"How did your mission go?" Tyrien asked as he sat down.

"I gathered the required information, unfortunately though my partner was discovered and killed." The young woman's eyes hardened.

"I'm sorry Phoebe, Tethys was a good man." The high councilor looked down for just a moment after saying this, so he didn't notice that Phoebe had stood up and quickly moved towards him placing her hands on his temples.

After a few moments of struggle from the surprised councilor his eyes rolled up into his head and he sagged into his seat. Phoebe moved her seat closer so she could take her time, her mission had been simple gather intelligence for the Ori leadership and if possible she was to condition someone in authority or otherwise sway them using the skills she had honed over the past four years in the convent.

She spent the next twenty minutes locked with her forehead touching his and her fingers on his temples. This would be very difficult and would likely burn out her abilities, he had a strong mind.

* * *

Phoebe smiled to herself as she watched Lal turn she wondered if enough of the compound remained in her veins after all this time. She had no intention of remaining to be tried before the Alterans' pitiful council. She carefully withdrew the amulet from around her neck pressed a catch on the back of it and then jammed the needle that appeared from the bottom edge of the golden amulet into her chest.

Her last thoughts defiance of the Alteran beliefs she'd forced herself to live with for the past 8 years.

* * *

Lal groaned trying to move, "What happened?" she managed to croak.

"The wicked witch of the west," Tav responded reaching for her hand between the bandages. "Luckily for you the suppression systems kicked in the moment the system detected the explosion limiting the damage to the one cell and some of the area outside. The force of the blast propelled you and several of the guards into the walls and gave you some nasty bruises and burns."

Lal was barely listening. She was just happy Tav was there holding her hand.

"Don't bother my patient to much Tav," Doctor Cellarius called from her office. She was lucky the city's fire suppression subroutines had been repaired when they had. Or she might have been killed. The doctor looked at the scans hopefully Lal was keeping up with her meditation; she found that patients who followed the meditations tended to require less treatment and usually recovered more quickly.

* * *

_**Notes: **__I hesitated about using that flashback at first, but now I think it fits really well. Originally I wrote it first and had it at the beginning of this chapter but after writing the segments with the interrogations and the gauntlet of truth (ha ha) or whatever you want to call it, it seemed to fit in better further down._

_I'm not really fond of flashbacks though written work tends to make them work better as the writer can tell you that the segment is a flashback, I've always felt them overused and disruptive. But occasionally they can be a good tool to provide insight and I hope that is what I've managed to do here._

_I really want to bring back the enigmatic meditation instructor but I haven't had reason or opportunity, and really haven't had a chance to think of how I'd do so. I'm going to have to let it simmer on the back burner so to speak. Maybe something will come up sooner or later._

_I had every intention of saving phoebe, they have the technology to give her a cleanslate free from her past decisions a chance to be a real alteran but she blew herself up before that could happen. I swear the story just wrote itself at that part, all i could do was limit the damage._


	9. Recovery, Cost and History Lessons

_I did only promise two a month, didn't I… _

**Chapter 9 – Recovery, Consequences and History Lessons**

"Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time."

~George Bernard Shaw

_Alteran date: year 6, month 5, day 2, time 10:30_

Aikino sat in front of his terminal watching as the last few reactor subroutines were restored from the backup, he had to pull them from one of the oldest backups made just before leaving celestas so they lacked the fine-tuning and various modifications that had been made over the past six years by the engineering teams. Horribly inefficient without those changes they would at least still work.

It would just be a matter of time until they could rebuild the control programs back to what they should have been. If they were lucky perhaps one of the newer backups would be salvageable allowing them to restore more of the functionality they needed.

Aikino sighed as he pushed that program off to the side of his screen letting it run in the background; he started on his next restoration project. They had argued for a short time many years ago about placing external weapons on the ship. Luckily the side pushing for them won, and several electrothermal accelerators had been constructed and mounted around the ship, these plasma cannons were loaded with a small solid cube with about two inches side length of propellant behind and a high density payload. The cube would be placed between two electrodes behind the payload when high voltage passed through it would vaporize the cube into a rapidly expanding electrically conductive superheated plasma field which propelled the projectile and plasma from the barrel of the weapon at great speeds. It had taken some time to determine a propellant that would work in the vacuum of space. Regrettably, this weapon required precious resources to construct both propellant and payload. So they had only included enough to cover each side of the city, making six in total.

The less expensive weapon in long term engagements was a particle accelerator that had been repurposed, the benefit of which was that it could still be used for research when not being used to blast a hostile ship out of the sky. The city had been constructed with the accelerator just inside the outer hull at the far edge of the ship and circled the entire city. Discharge points had been constructed every few meters around the outer edge allowing the weaponized accelerator a fairly complete firing arc at any target around the city. The accelerator made use of hydrogen which was an element found in abundance through the universe. Meaning they could rearm from just about any planet with an atmosphere and many gas giants. The accelerator worked by stripping or adding electrons to hydrogen atoms causing them to be electrically charged and allowing the accelerator to propel them around the ship until they approached the speed of light. Positively or negatively charged atoms of the hydrogen gas would meet a canceling charge at the firing point preventing the individual atoms from repelling each other and allowing them to be fired in a straight line at the target relatively close to the speed of light. The biggest limitation of the weapon was that only a small amount of hydrogen gas could be loaded into the accelerator it was still enough to sustain a few seconds worth of fire at any target in the path of the many firing tubes branching away from the main accelerator and they could even use it on multiple targets at the same time which would reduce the overall strength but was still lethal. The other limitation was the charge time with how long it would take for the accelerator to bring the ionized gasses up to the required relativistic speeds.

The beautiful thing about the particle accelerator or maticelero (roughly or incorrectly translated Sea of speed, correctly translated mass accelerator) was that the beam could be adjusted to provide near invisibility, or could be made to produce light on a desired wavelength. Of course the less visible the weapon was the more powerful the blast it provided. But this would overheat the firing magnets quickly and prevent the beam from sustaining fire for a longer period of time.

The problem was both of these weapon systems were hit hard by the virus, large sections of the control program for the accelerator and the associated various firing chambers around the ship would have to be rewritten. They were mostly defenseless until Aikino and the other weapons engineers could restore enough of the programming to make them safe for use again.

Aikino sighed again and began the long task of digging through the various databases he'd just finished cleansing of any traces of the virus for the various programs that would provide the proper control systems. Maybe if they could improve their weapons control systems this would be worth the trouble of cleaning up after the witch.

* * *

_Alteran date: 6-5-2 14:15_

"What have you got?" Fenri called out as he entered the bridge, he was punishing himself by not taking the four hours of sleep required for his body to repair the damage of the day but his meditations had afforded him some leeway in that he had some limited control over his body and while he couldn't completely flush the toxins and repair cellular degradation as well as natural sleep could it was better control than his ancestors a few generations ago had.

"We've analyzed the information recorded from the Filiacet incident, sir."

No one could quite bring themselves to use Phoebe's name in connection to the suicide bombing that had damaged the cell completely obliterating the researcher turned saboteur that had been hiding amongst them for so long. Her name would eventually come to mean _Fiery Daughter of Lies;_ over time the Alterans would eventually repurpose her name allowing the name Phoebe to be used as bright or illuminating instead of Fiery and her last name would lose the first three letters and become the root word lies over time that word too would change and then be fall out of use.

"Sir, you aren't going to like this." The technician sitting in his chair brought up a schematic of the ship and a feed of the video from the cell. "We managed to analyze the compounds within the needle that she plunged into her chest shortly before exploding. Trace amounts of another biologically inert compound were found within her blood." The video feed slowly advanced to the point where she stabbed the sharp implement into her chest. A short moment later blue black lines speared their way in spider webs across her skin before the synthesis completed causing them to glow a brilliant red orange through her skin. Burning their way through they consumed her body until exposed to the atmosphere at which point they flashed brilliantly before exploding.

Had her cell been next to the hull that section would have opened to the vacuum of space; given the extent of the damage to the computer system Fenri wasn't sure if the ship would have been capable of closing emergency bulkheads to prevent the explosive decompression of that entire level. Luckily her cell was further inside the ship and within a section mostly unaffected by the sabotage that had caused havoc with the computers onboard, as such the computer detected the uncontrolled explosion and activated a suppressive field which had just been restored to working order around the section, saving the life of Artiem Lal and her security detail.

"Sir, as a precaution we configured the internal sensors to scan for the compound that was found in Phoebe's blood and it detected three other instances onboard."

"Use the stun weapon Lal brought, locate and stun those individuals take them immediately to the brig don't take any chances have them searched, stripped, and scanned before they wake up, and make sure they get some clothing, can't have the council getting squeamish about the treatment of prisoners. See if Amelius can repair and upgrade the gauntlet of truth, they surrendered any right to believe that senseless drivel they've been preaching for the past twenty years when they chose to come aboard this ship."

* * *

Fenri reflected on that conflict which had cast his people far from their original home. The division between the Ori and the Alteran lay within the lack of life their galaxy suffered from. All worlds they colonized had needed to be seeded with plant and animal life having none of their own even within the habitation zone. It had slowed the Alteran colonization efforts considerably in the early years as sleeper ships finding mostly barren worlds with all the makings for life but no life except what they brought with them had needed to build an ecosystem on each world they settled. The Alterans never knew the strife of competing for resources as one nation among many. As one people they developed a curiosity about the universe and a desire to learn all of its secrets. They had a subtle faith one that pointed to the infinite depth of the universe and they believed that some sentient force had to be responsible for its existence and by extension their own.

Perhaps it was this lack of life on each planet they set foot on, perhaps their carefully tended terra-forming efforts which had brought forth such beauty and life on each world they claimed led them down the path. A religious group arose among them after a few who had been exposed to radiation burns ascended. The religion concluded that of their empty galaxy the Alteran people were the only intelligent beings in the universe, and as such, they were Gods. Their bringing life to so many worlds only strengthened this reasoning.

Over time followers of this religion infiltrated every sector of Alteran society and government. If only the Alteran people had seen fit to quarantine this fanaticism before it had spread to more than one world they might have succeeded, he thought. But it was not their way. Having seen religions rise and fall before they had ventured into the stars they had assumed this would be the same.

After covering a quarter of the galaxy spreading through the early experimental stargate network that had been spread to many of the worlds across the galaxy, a few of this cult managed to ascend. While the first few who ascended would not interfere with their mortal brothers and sisters they did their best to protect them from the newly ascended false gods as their power waned and the power of the Ori waxed full they finally appeared to their brothers they did their best to mask their ships as they left their former home.

There was something though that the ascended hadn't shared, he could feel it when they had talked with the remaining open minded Alteran. Something about the situation with their fallen brothers and their followers that made the whole thing worse, something they weren't sharing. He sensed that even if they had squashed the movement before it had taken root, they still wouldn't have won.

* * *

_Alteran date: 6-5-2 14:30_

Tav forced himself to meditate after Doctor Keller kicked him out, Keller was the name he preferred everyone use instead of his slightly longer family name Cellarius. Tav sat in on one of the meditation classes being taught to some of the younger students he relaxed himself listening to Numana Lar giving instruction on a breathing exercise he had completed several years ago.

One of the things he had noticed was that most other meditation teachers instructed the students to clear their minds but never how or why, When he asked how on his second lesson many years ago the teacher had looked at him odd and then transferred him to Lar's class. She was cryptic with her answers but at least she gave an answer instead of just calmly staring at you. Her response to those questions of how and why had been a story, "A man cleaned his house of all the junk that had collected. It took him a while but once he was finished his house clean and empty. After a short time the man began to ignore the fragments that he brought in day after day and debris began to accumulate again. He was forced to again clean and empty his house. After sometime the man decided it would be better if he created some form of organization for his house to prevent this accumulation of debris that life brought to his doorstep. So the man decided to build shelves on which to place items, and a few vaults in which to place valuable or dangerous items and resolved to carefully sort each thing to decide where in the house to place it."

He had listened intently and thought for most of the hour over her words before responding at the end of the class after everyone else had left, "So like the man I am clearing my mind of that which has accumulated and like the empty house life will fill the empty space I've just created, so I must be ready to fill that space with something else."

She had given him a look before nodding and replying, "Focus first on the meditation exercise I will give you at the start of the lesson. When your mind is completely focused on the task at hand and not distracting you with stray thoughts then your mind is clear. From there you can begin to sort through your experiences and memories and bring order to chaos." This was probably the clearest and least enigmatic response he would ever get from her as her student.

He had long since constructed the mental lockbox in his mind for storing unwanted and potentially disturbing memories. It was a variation of what would have occurred naturally in undisciplined minds, and allowed him to place memories behind a filter that made them more distant and less painful. He would still know they were there and vaguely what they contained but they wouldn't make him unstable or crazy as they would if he had left them out in the open. The side effect of this process is that for the rest of his life he would have to continually sort his day to day experiences in this manner deciding which ones needed to be available for instant recall, which ones needed to be buried as deep as possible, and which ones could go somewhere in-between.

Forgetting to do this necessary maintenance would result in headaches as his mental representation of his mind would grow more cluttered and eventually he would be unable to do much of anything. Some people not wanting to devote the time to this mental cataloging would over time re-establish an automatic sorting system similar to the one that would have started involuntarily had they not taken control of the sorting to start with. The problem with such was that it tended to file everything in such a way that newest information was most easily accessible but after a while older information would fall into the fog at the back of the mind and be forgotten.

* * *

Thelya sat calmly in the meditation room a field had been established that would limit or adjust the sounds in and outside the room so that the perfect white noise could be achieved to aid in the process of distracting the mind long enough to trick it into the state required to properly meditate. For some it came easier than others.

She had noticed when her brother had walked into the room, looking a little ragged around the edges; she ignored his entrance mostly, sensing that he needed the time to meditate.

Lar greeted the class as usual with a cryptic greeting "There is a large boulder." She said pointing to the rock she had the engineers place within the room for the lesson. "Do you consider it to be inside or outside your mind?"

One of the other students particularly known for trying to outdo themselves in answering her questions responded, "Well from the teachings of Obisek everything is an objectification of mind, so I would say that the stone is inside my mind."

"Your head must feel very heavy," observed Thelya tilting her head to look at her fellow student slightly lopsided, "if you are carrying around a stone like that in your mind."

Lar just inclined her head slightly at Thelya's response though a slight crinkling of the skin around her eyes exposed her amusement at both responses. She continued the rest of the way in, taking her usual place on the not uncomfortable mat on the floor at the front of the room and began the lesson.

* * *

_Alteran date: 6-5-2 14:50_

Arwen blinked his eyes open, it had surprised him the results from his aptitude test, while he had scored similarly to his previous exam in tactics and security as he suspected he would, the surprise came that he was far more suited to medical the score there having surpassed his previous scores in tactical, all Alterans where required to learn basic tactics, medicine, engineering, and programming among other disciplines. All the varied disciplines shared some overlap with each other making it useful to be capable in each field.

He had assumed that his results would be the same but new body, new capabilities. He was taking different classes now, having to retake the last few years' worth of study to gain the medical knowledge required to be of any use in that field. He'd proclaimed a desire to look into the technology Ianas had used to clone him. He was certain that while he shared DNA and memories with his former self the artificially created cells that made him up where different enough to change the results in some way. His research into that process could provide the answer.

* * *

Thelya mastered the basics of the lesson very quickly and spent the rest of the time completing the exercise until she was certain she could fall into the breathing pattern without much difficulty. She continued to listen to the teacher while doing her own organizing of the space in her mind. She listened as the teacher ended the instruction part of the lesson to allow the group time to practice.

"In the field of quantum mechanics there is a principle known as the Observer effect. It states that the act of observing by definition changes what is being observed. The same is true in reverse your Observing changes you, the most subtle way is that you gain an experience, information relating to what your observing is stored within. We must remember that the act of not acting is in itself an action and all actions not only reflect who we are but change us as individuals. If we study the universe solely through the lens of detachment and speculation we may lose sight of the truth within. Remember to meditate frequently or you may lose sight of the beauty around you."

* * *

_Hope the heavy philosophy in this chapter didn't push anyone away. Trust me though it is necessary in order to learn something meaningful about the psyche of the Alteran people. Next chapter, bring on the giant aliens?_

_The full council of the Alterans is split into two main groups, High council, and Low council; the high council oversees matters of judicial and military importance and ensures the low council responsible for executive and legislative power as a whole does not abuse that power. Matters that affect the whole of Alteran society require a meeting of the full council._

_The high council is made up of seven members from each of the areas of importance. Each high councilor is elected by only the members of that particular field of study. Life sciences, engineering covering material sciences construction and maintenance, Tactical, Security, computer science, culture and education, and the presiding high council member elected by the entirety of the Alteran people._

_The low council is elected for more the precise fields of study that fall under each of the other categories either as subsets or as unions of two or more of the main fields, such as biology, botany, and archeology (though not much needed), linguistics, medical engineering, tactical engineering, and so on._

_Tactical could be described as covert operations or things relating to defense/offensive actions from or against outside forces and Security would be law enforcement and internal defense against invasion, both share a close relation._


	10. Arwen

**Alteran date: year 6, month 6, day 7, time 15:00**

Thelya entered the mess hall for dinner, the bare metal walls reflecting the overhead lights off their polished utilitarian surface. She headed for one of food dispensers set into the wall by the door where a small touch screen displayed a list of food and drinks. She scrolled through the list selecting glass of tea, a salad and plum chicken dish that sounded interesting. In the wall underneath the display an opening let off a soft glow and a few seconds later her meal was ready.

She noticed Arwen sitting alone, a nutrient shake in front of him, he was reading from a tablet, at one of the tables near her and took a seat. After eating for a few minutes her curiosity got the better of her and she interrupted his reading.

"Can I ask you something Arwen?" Thelya was using her everyone's-little-sister look in full force.

Arwen looked up slightly confused, "huh?"

"Does it bother you being um.. cloned?"

"It's… different." He responded after a moment of thought. "Why?"

"I was just wondering." She said as she looked back down at her food. After a brief silence she asked, "would you want yourself to be cloned again."

"This single second chance is enough Thelya," Arwen said taking a sip of his nutrient shake, "if I die again it will be my own stupid fault and I'll stay dead."

"Oh.." her small voice catching in her throat.

"The thing is Thelya. While I have all the memories and probably share the same genes as the Arwen that died rescuing a group of kids from the Ori troops within a greater than ninety-nine percent error margin. I don't feel like i'm the same Arwen. It's hard to describe. I have a lot of what made him who he was. His memories up until that mission, his desires and goals. But I still feel like i'm not him."

"Please Don't take this the wrong way Arwen, but i've kind of had a crush on you," she faltered before picking up the nerve again, "well other you I mean, since I pulled up your file a couple years after my brother and I were rescued."

At this she went silent staring down at her food awkwardly. Her confession startled Arwen slightly.

"Damn, I don't... I mean, I'm not even sure what age to consider myself. I.. I've got all of other me's memories which has to count for something." He faltered at this before continuing. "But I feel like i'm in a fifteen year old body, and if I look at age since being cloned, I'm probably barely two months old. The odd part is while I shouldn't have any memories from the time between when they did the copy and when he died, I feel like I should know you."

At this moment the lights dimmed as an alarm sounded throughout the ship for a second before the Fenris' voice sounded through the intercom, "All personal to designated posts, prepare for non-standard spatial jump in one hour."

"Aikino said this might be happening today." Thelya huffed the tension from their earlier conversation was gone, replaced by the tension over the new situation.

"Hey I'm considered a civilian until medical says I'm fit for active duty want to go see if we can watch whatever is going to happen from the observation deck?"

"Let me finish eating, we should be able to get there before it starts." Thelya replied before tucking into her meal.

The observation deck didn't actually have windows, It had high definition floor to ceiling displays that wrapped all the way around the room. Using the sensor logs the computer was able to generate an image of the surrounding space outside on the displays. The truly awe inspiring part of the room where the floor and ceiling. Underneath a framework of transparent aluminum panels overlaying a grid of metal supports underneath which a massive display showing the space under the ship. Overhead the ceiling held a similar array of displays providing a view of the space above for a complete immersive effect.

This room was one of the early projects from before the conflict, completed before they needed to use all available personnel to make the ship capable of space travel. Having already been completed it was left alone since recycling the components for use elsewhere would require more time than simply processing the raw materials they had on hand.

Arwen and Thelya stepped into the room just a few minutes before the hour was up. They weren't the only ones to have this idea. there was a small crowd spread throughout the room. they made their way to a seat towards the forward view.

The captain's voice came back on the city intercom, "In a few short minutes we will step farther into space, joining the contingent that left before us. We don't know what kind of situation we will be entering, our friends on the planet below are giving us this leg-up on the journey away from the ashes of our old home. But even they have limits and while they can tell us where our brothers and sisters cities and put us next to them they don't know what the next galaxy holds. If they need our help we need to be ready to assist them. Let us move forward into our future together."

The intercom went silent as a beam of light shot from the planet to the ship flaring on that side of the display before it split and spiderwebbed out slowly covering the view in a few seconds it had surrounded the ship flaring in a full spectrum of colors generated by the ship's interpretation of the sensor readings. It built in intensity a pleasant hum slowly building through the ship as the deck plates resonated to the light of the web of energy wrapping around the ship. It gave one last flare of light before a moment of disorientation that blurred everything and then faded out.

The view screens rapidly adjusted to show two gleaming cities of similar construction. The display automatically tagged them, names showing up on the display in standard script. The first was the Unda-procella, it's metal hull glowing a soft silvery blue against the starry backdrop. The second was the Ignis-tempesta the minerals throughout her hull gave a natural red-orange color to the ship giving the impression of a dancing flame as the light reflected from it.


End file.
